Lead Grok Engineer

xAI’s mission is to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge. Our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering excellence. This organization is for individuals who appreciate challenging themselves and thrive on curiosity. We operate with a flat organizational structure. All employees are expected to be hands-on and to contribute directly to the company’s mission. Leadership is given to those who show initiative and consistently deliver excellence. Work ethic and strong prioritization skills are important. All engineers are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.

Lead Grok Engineers work directly with our end customers, leading teams to own strategy and execution of high-stakes projects. You’ll lead a small team or pod, overseeing end-to-end project delivery while collaborating with client decision-makers, sales leaders, and engineering teams to set project scope, expectations, and pricing. A day’s work may include:

• Deliver solutions end to end that meet the needs of our customers - understanding user pain points, scoping product specs, and designing and building LLM-powered software.
• Benchmarking the model or help write evals for customers to identify model weaknesses.
• Improve model performance by system prompt tuning or fine tuning models.
• Generating synthetic data or working with human data teams in generating human data.
• Analyze request logs or read through prompt data.
• Build internal tooling to automate yourself out of the job.
• Improving xAI SDKs or developer documentation based on customer feedback.
• Work hands-on with prospects and customers to demonstrate and communicate the value of xAI throughout the sales cycle, from demo to technical proof of concept to design and implementation.

• Strong passion for solving real-world business problems and delivering measurable impact through AI solutions.
• Proven track record of shipping high-quality code and successfully completing projects in challenging environments.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and adapt to changing requirements and priorities in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Strong communication skills that will become important when interfacing with customers to clarify requirements and drive a project to completion.
• Emphasis on designing, implementing, and maintaining robust and scalable AI-driven solutions.
• Proficiency in working with large, complex codebases and designing efficient data processing and model serving architectures

An ideal candidate meets at least the following requirements:

• 4 - 12 years of software engineering experience.
• Background in full stack with in-depth understanding of product architecture.
• Proven experience in AI or machine learning product implementation with APIs, back-end, and front-end interfaces.
• Expertise in prompt engineering.
• Proven Expertise in Python and/or TypeScript.
• Great verbal and written communication skills in English.
• Ability to turn business and product ideas into engineering solutions.
• Experience in Python and/or TypeScript.
• Understanding of the HTTP protocol.
• Strong engineering background, preferred in fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, and Data Science.

Furthermore, candidates may stand out by having any of the following experiences:

• Power user of Grok.
• Building evals for new capabilities and evaluating our systems.
• Demonstrating an understanding of machine learning fundamentals, including model evaluation, training and fine-tuning.
• Excellent visual, verbal, UI, and interaction skills.
• Experience in client facing sales or delivery focused roles.
• Building evals for new capabilities and evaluating our systems.
• Deploying machine learning models to production.
• Writing developer documentation.
• Creating and maintaining SDKs.
• Showcasing the ability to work with massive datasets, optimize performance, and scale systems to handle high-throughput workloads.
• Using Pulumi or Terraform.

After submitting your application, the team reviews your CV and statement of exceptional work. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to a 15 minute interview (“phone interview”) during which a member of our team will ask questions. If you clear the initial phone interview, you will proceed to the next steps:

1. Take home project 
2. Final technical screen.

Our goal is to complete the process within one week. All interviews will be conducted in person when applicable.

The role is based in Palo Alto. Candidates are expected to have a travel schedule.

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at xAI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.

xAI is an equal opportunity employer.

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